Employees refusal to follow instructions

[m0therofdragons]

Employee works one day a week in my sister's dept. Sister is the senior manager.

Sister: "I'm moving team meetings to Thursdays as that's when pt employee works and I want us all to be together once a week for a briefing and opportunity to discuss any key issues/pieces of work."

Pt employee: "thank you for changing the team meeting to my work day however, I won't be attending."

Er wtf? Surely if you senior manager tells you they're holding a meeting and invite you the reply is "of course, what time?" How would you deal with this?

She needs to clearly inform the employee that attending is not optional & she will be there or face disciplinary.

A clear instruction that yes, you WILL attend these meetings (give time). If they do not attend, it becomes a disciplinary matter, and they should be made aware of this

I would firstly ask why it was she thought she didn't need to attend. As it sounds as though she has been managing OK without attending the meetings so far, I would give serious consideration to her reasoning.

I can see that if you only work one day a week, a team meeting would take a huge chunk out of your working time, so I would want to have a clear idea of the benefits to present to her, if I were to insist on her attendance.

She's not had a manager until recently and is resisting being managed. She's not achieving what she should be so dsis wants to start team meetings so everyone is clear about work streams and how it links with the whole team. Honestly, in my line of work she's no longer have a job.

Your sister needs to seriously consider getting rid of her if she doesn't have a bloody good reason for not being at the meeting and for not being managed. It's ridiculous to pay someone when they're not doing the job they're paid to do.

Your sister has to deal with it otherwise she will lose respect as a manager to all her other reports and they will start to think attendance is optional too.

She will have to tell the employee she is expected to be there. Follow up if she does not. Repeat the requirement. Then start to warn of disciplinaries. Follow through ideally to a dismissal.

I find that incompetent people who try to arrange it so that they fall under the radar and escape detection are very hard to manage. Your sister's employee knows that the meetings are to flush her out. That is why she is point blank refusing to attend, which is actually quite stupid of her to make her opposition so obvious. The other favourite tactic is passive aggressiveness.

It takes perseverance to smoke these people out.

This is insubordination. As others have said, your sister needs to make it clear that attendance is compulsory and that, if this employee fails to attend, she will face disciplinary action. If she is underperforming and resisting being managed this employee cannot have a future at this business unless she sorts those issues out.

Just wait for the justification. " Well I would have achieved all my objectives, if I wasn't in meetings all day"

As long as the meeting is scheduled for a time the employee is scheduled to be at work then the cant decline surely?

Sister should send out a calendar appointment "Compulsory Departmental Meeting, all employees to attend".

Thanks all. I'm really cross on her behalf. Luckily it's going well with the other staff! Also? Apologies for the missing apostrophe in the title.

Insubordination can be used as a reason for disciplinary.
I would advise your sister to speak with her employee and find out why she doesn't want to attend. Always give the benefit of the doubt. If there is not a good reason, then tell her she must attend.
Put the request in writing (email) and keep any replies just in case.

OTOH I often avoid our team meetings as they are unproductive and a total waste of my time. The 2 hours spent naval gazing and lis tending to team moans are 2 hours I can spend doing something usefull. Our team is more than a bit disfunction al - even so called boss avoids them.

2 hour team meetings? What a waste of time. No meeting should ever be longer than 30 mins, suggest that they remove the chairs from the meeting room to stop people stalling

Dsis' meetings are 30 mins max apparently. My team meetings often say they'll be 30 mins but never under an hour and can be 2 hours but are productive and informative - there's a lot of changes my team need to be aware of.

If employee had approached it saying she's concerned about lack of time to do her job I think that's a different conversation. That's not what she's said.

Your sister should not be discussing this with you. It all sounds highly unprofessional from both sides.

My boss explains that staff meetings are part of our paid contract.
Failure to attend is a point to be brought up in annual review.

My boss explains that staff meetings are part of our paid contract.
Failure to attend is a point to be brought up in annual review.

My boss explains that staff meetings are part of our paid contract.
Failure to attend is a point to be brought up in annual review.

My boss explains that staff meetings are part of our paid contract.
Failure to attend is a point to be brought up in annual review.

My boss explains that staff meetings are part of our paid contract.
Failure to attend is a point to be brought up in annual review.

As a part time worker there were times when I could not attend meetings, not on my days off, holidays, hospital appointments, manager threatened all of us with disciplinary if we didn't attend but we had genuine reasons to not go. If the meetings have now been changed to when this employee is working then of course she has to go, how can she not if it's on her working day. Perhaps your sister needs to have a one to one with her.

Your sister should not be discussing this with you. It all sounds highly unprofessional from both sides.

I don't live in the same country as dsis and don't know her employee at all. Dsis needed to vent. It's all confidential. Not sure if employee is male or female even. I was just stunned someone would think it's appropriate to email a senior manager this kind of reply.

It's all confidential.

Exactly, she should not be discussing this with you.

You have posted it all over the internet, so clearly you cannot be trusted with this information- which makes it even worse.

Why unprofessional to discuss a work dilemma? How do you learn if you never get others opinions on issues?
And no one is identifiable,not the country,organisation,sister,employee I can't see this is a problem.